Should Have Known
by MioneBristow
Summary: I do not own Hunger Games... just borrowing. This is so far, a selection of moments and realizations that someone should have known before it happened.
1. Peeta should have known

He'd known.

He'd always known.

The way she reacted after the interview where he'd told all of Panem… all of district 12… that he'd been in love with her, told him that there was a lot… a LOT … of convincing to do so that Katniss would believe him.

So he wasn't sure why he was at all surprised to find out that it was an act on her part.

It stung a bit ,to be sure.

He thought that he'd shown her that he really did love her. Suspected that she really did care or she would have … should… have skewered him with an arrow instead of using the berries.

She'd as much admitted that she was more confused as they got closer to home. He should have accepted that.

But he felt that he was being used as a pawn. First by the Capitol as he told Katniss before up on the roof. But now that the games were over, he felt doubly used and he really did wonder if Haymitch and Katniss worked up the whole thing the entire time.

Maybe it had been a stupid thing to ask for separate training.

He felt ashamed and dirty. He'd thought… really thought… that Katniss had grown to love him.

She had gone looking for him after the rule change and when she saw how wounded he was, instead of letting him die, she'd lied to him and gone to the feast to get medicine that had saved his life.

Was he so starved for affection and attention that he had assumed that a 'showmance' was real? He wondered what Katniss would do if she was in his shoes.

It began to dawn on him that he really didn't know Katniss and maybe that was the problem.

He really should have known.


	2. Mrs Everdeen should have known

She should have known.

The moment her heart first skipped a beat at the voice.

THE voice that would haunt her dreams, stop the birds from singing and make her heart pound uncontrollably.

She should have realized, oh and maybe she knew, that it would only ever end in her heart being broken.

Broken into so many shattered pieces that there was no repair. No hope for restoration. Not even her love for her daughters would be enough to pull herself out of bed and back into life.

Katniss was a survivor and she was proud of how she'd straightened her shoulders and provided for them. For Prim. She'd hated the fact that she'd signed up for tessare and she regretted at once her rash decisions that had caused her to be cut off from the inheritance that should have been hers.

It was rare that she thought of life out of the Seam. There was pain and loss that had occurred before the bombs were ever dropped on town during the Quarter Quell.

Before the mine explosion had stopped the music.

And stopped her heart.

She mourned now, more than ever the loss of her first love. The baker's boy. Peeta's Father. She saw traces of him in his son. Oh, he'd moved on… regrettably in her opinion because the town girl he'd married really was nothing more than a conniving wench who had once been a friend. But she'd been terrible from the start and it hurt her that Peeta – the same age as Katniss- was his youngest. Things could have been different.

But then they wouldn't have had Peeta and Katniss. Or Prim… or his older boys. But Peeta and Katniss… she was so certain that they would change things and while, yes, yes they did change everything. The cost had been severe.

She hardly dared to hope that things could possibly return to normal. That there would be music again and a chance for hearts to pound uncontrollably at the sound.

But she really should have known it all along.


	3. President Snow should have known

He should have known.

Someday, someone would come along and topple his carefully constructed walls and wreck total havoc on his kingdom. He hadn't expected it would be as easy to do as, well, shredding a bag and letting a pound of apples bounce all over the mines surrounding a stockpile of goods that the careers had made at the cornucopia.

He'd underestimated the only living victor of district twelve 24 years ago. Only? Yes, only. Because he'd managed to have the other troublemaker dealt with as soon as Abernathy had won the last Quarter Quell. He was sure that it must have hurt to have been shoved into mentoring without a partner.

The victor of the 2nd Quarter Quell was difficult to manage and resisted all efforts to be brought into the life that awaited him as a victor. Even after he tried to force the youngster into submission by killing his family and girlfriend back home in his district, he still didn't give in to what was required. He instead ruined his value by drinking.

And since he refused to do what was required, there was no other option but to ensure that the district twelve brats never had sponsors and sure as heck never became a victor of the hunger games.

Except.

He really should have known it the moment there had been a volunteer. He probably should have had the reaping rigged the other way.

Reaped one of the boy's younger brothers instead. Then he would have volunteered and the country wouldn't be facing a rebellion brought on by these silly children with their lofty ideas of how things "should" be.

It certainly had to be all their fault.

No adult would possibly play a game of rebellion against the president.

Although he probably should have known better than to tell the girl anything. In spite of the lovely price that her innocence would have brought… it was so much more of a punishment to chain her to what she didn't want.

The woods had revealed it. And he would use it. Every word she'd ever said to the boy as they spent their time illegally beyond their district. He'd almost wished that they would run so that he could have them captured by hovercraft. It would have been like hunting moose from a heliocopter.

Then they could have been turned into Avoxes and made to serve what they despised.

Or, he thought with a smug smile. He could force her to marry the boy that she'd not wanted to love. Perhaps test their resolve by killing off their tributes for a few years. Oh, even better.

Reap the little one again. She would have to play this time a her older troublemaker of a sister couldn't become a tribute on her behalf.

Make her suffer through public viewing of her sham of a marriage and in a few years, he could force them to have children. And in 12 years or so, well, well, may the odds be ever in your favor indeed.

But

He should have known that it wouldn't work out.


End file.
